Xiaomi is no stranger, that’s for sure. But the company could be making some major moves over the next year or so. Among the latest headlines surrounding the company is the fact that the company is now planning to work with a rival manufacturer in China, Meitu.
Both, Xiaomi and Meitu are said to collaborate in a project to enhance the camera performance on Xiaomi’s upcoming releases. With Google starting to crush everyone with its incredible camera enhancements, Xiaomi, along with the rest of the Chinese hoard of OEMs aren’t backing down. While Meitu certainly isn’t the best brand in the camera department, it sure has a ton of experience in the selfie department and is very well-known for its suite of apps in China rather than its vague lineup of phones. This is definitely going to be an incredible improvement and is definitely going to leave a long-lasting impression if they manage to pull it off well.
While not universal, you have to agree that the MIUI camera app could be better, especially when it comes to the quality of the images, at least in the case of the Poco F1 where the camera quality stood up to the likes of the Galaxy Note 9 when paired with a Google Camera app port.
By default, Xiaomi is allowing users to use the new Google camera port by enabling Camera2API, an API that Xiaomi had previously locked down by default. With the Camera2API enabled, we saw massive improvements in image quality with our Poco F1 and it seems like that’s the case with a number of other phones too. Both, the Poco F1 and Mi 8 sport the IMX 363 as their main rear sensor, and while the Poco F1 does lack OIS, it performed horribly against the Mi8 when both of the devices were pit against each another while using the stock camera app.
While the details are certainly vague and aren’t that through based on the report published by Weibo Sina. However, what we can determine is the fact that Xiaomi hasn’t been that much of a “game-changer” when it comes to R&D except for the Mi MiX lineup of devices.
Sina reports that rival brand, Huawei had invested 15.1%, 14.6% and 14.9% of its operating volume into R&D while Xiaomi barely invested 2.2%, 3% and 2.7% throughout 2015-2017, respectively.
What would come out of this is certainly yet to be seen. With sales declining in China, it seems like Xiaomi has to step up its game once again, at least in China where they’re facing some major competition from the likes of OnePlus, Huawei, Oppo and Vivo. Globally, soon after the launch of the Mi MiX 3, Xiaomi’s Donovan Sung reported that the company has exceeded its target of 100M units by the end of October. At this rate, we’re expecting the company to hit the 120M unit mark by the end of 2018.
